Coalition to review $900m in ‘ridiculous’ research grants

Tony Abbott and his deputy Julie Bishop campaign at a leather business in Narangba, Queensland, on Thursday. The Coalition says some projects cost a lot and have done little for Australians.
Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

An Abbott government would veto what it regards as wasteful history, ­philosophy and arts research projects, a decision that has upset the research community.

A Coalition government would ­“reprioritise" $103 million of the $900 million in annual Australian Research Council funding to stop money going to projects with “increasingly ridiculous" titles.

Liberal MP
Jamie Briggs
, chairman of the Coalition’s scrutiny of ­government waste committee, ­ridiculed four projects worth a ­combined $1.2 million that were approved by the council.

They include $595,000 for “reaching a better understanding of the self" and $160,000 for an examination of the ­sexuality of Islamic interpretations of reproductive health technologies in Egypt.

“Taxpayer dollars have been wasted on projects that do little, if anything, to advance Australians’ research needs," Mr Briggs said in a statement.

The same projects were named in federal Parliament by opposition finance spokesman
Andrew Robb
when he highlighted so-called government waste in 2012.

Margaret Sheil
, the former head of the ARC, warned against the “politicising" of research, which had occurred under the Howard government.

In 2006, the minister for education, science and training,
Brendan Nelson
, vetoed projects in the humanities ­andsocial sciences which had ­previously been approved by the research council’s panel of experts.

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“Politicians are not in a position to make a decision about whether ­something is worthwhile based on a title," said Professor Sheil, who dealt with the fallout from Dr Nelson’s ­decisions.

“All projects have been through an incredibly rigorous process and the problem with the minister intervening is that it destroys the confidence in the system," she said.

‘Hilarious’ assumption

Professor Sheil, who is now provost at the University of Melbourne, said applications for about 6000 projects go out to 30,000 experts around the world for assessment each year before successful grants are announced.

“They are assessed by six world experts in a particular field to ensure they are original and we have success rates of one in five," she said.

Former Macquarie University ­vice-chancellor
Steven Schwartz
said it was “hilarious" to think the Coalition believed it could save large amounts of money by examining the relatively small number of ARC grants that go to history and philosophy projects.

He also derided the Coalition for misunderstanding the importance of, for example, research into grief associated with cancer deaths and the relevance of this to “harder" disciplines such as medicine.

Higher Education Minister
Kim Carr
took to Twitter to say that Liberal Party “hostility to universities is spearheaded by their contempt for humanities, ­history, philosophy, arts".

Liberal leader
Tony Abbott
had sunk to “new lows", Senator Carr said.

“The ARC has rightly enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. Its competitive, merit-based assessment processes should not be called into question," he said in a statement.